ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Were you at all nervous stepping into this?
Its the biggest and most complicated role youve tackled.DARREN CRISS:There were no nerves whatsoever.
This was the most exciting, I-cant-wait-to-do-this experience Ive ever had.
Jeff Daly/FX
This is an opportunity Ive been waiting and working my entire life for…
This is a role of a lifetime.
Im dripping with gratitude and overwhelmed.
Im so fully aware that this is not something that comes around often.
So thats what it felt like every day.
Theres not nervousness or trepidation or fear.
I sort of always loved things that look to other people like theyre hard to take on.
Im not saying anything is easy.
Theres so many things about this that are great.
So no, I wasnt nervous at all.
I think people have this fixation with dark things they think theyre scary or hard.
Maybe Im just a dark person.
Youre thinking about the emotions that bare them.
It doesnt come home to me.
It doesnt make me afraid of Andrew.
It doesnt make me love him or hate him any less.
I get disappointed by him.
My heart breaks for him, mainly because of all the good things we get to see about him.
How did you get inside the character of Andrew?
Hes so complicated and mysterious.
Theres not a whole lot of preparation you’re able to do.
The people who knew him only knew one side of him.
This is actually an advantage to me that this isnt a person people are familiar with.
Its this sort of alibi.
At any point, hes ready to fire off in any direction.
You cant really prepare for that.
I did as much research as humanly possible.
Theres not a whole lot to go on.
At the end of the day, theres the Andrew who walks and talks on this Earth.
Theres the Andrew that people experienced.
Then theres this person whos my guiding light, which is the person on this page.
I did as much homework as possible.
You just have to be available on the day and just play each scene.
I had to live with this young man.
Living with him as a teenager and a young man.
Obviously, the things that make us different are big but I think theyre few in number.
Ryan Murphy launched your career in so many ways.
What was it like working with him this time?
I never worked directly with him.
But we never had really made something like this together.
It was cool for me to see.
It was really a thrill to work with someone in that capacity.
Actors are only as good as the moments they get and hes given me quite an extraordinary moment.
It could easily have veered into camp or gone over the top.
You always want something to be as grounded as possible.
If you just have a cut and dry good guy/bad guy, thats not interesting.
We have to humanize him thats the only route to get to know him on a larger level.
It was like shooting two completely different shows.
I have no idea how its going to play out.
I cant wait to see the parallels.
Andrew is somebody that curated his image very well, like with doctoral accuracy, surgical accuracy.
He really wants to ensure he was viewed a certain way by certain people.
Its not too dissimilar with how many of us filter our own lives now.
At what point is it a crime to want to embellish your life.
I think he was the pre-Instagram filter Instagrammer.
He filtered his own life.
The thing people said about him was that he was a storyteller.
He wanted people to think a certain way of him.
That to me is less devious and more misguided and heartbreaking.
I dont get mad at Andrew my heart breaks for him.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Storyairs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.
